Usos del suelo: dinámicas recientes y principales problemáticas

Qualitative research is a time consuming affair, and demands a great deal of effort in regards to being creative and thoroughly in the stages of preparation. Further, it requires a lot from the researcher when it comes to facilitating and conducting the data gathering, as well as in the processing of the gathered data. However, a qualitative research gives the researcher a unique opportunity to actually get involve in the subject, and by participating in the interviews, it is possible to both learn and engage deeper in the matter. Conversely, with a qualitative research process it is necessary to perform some methodological reflections, since the researcher actually becomes a part of the research process, and thereby creates a situation where his or hers presence may potentially affect the results.

There are many limitations that one should be aware of when exercising qualitative research. First of all I would like to point to what Dalby & Halloway (2010) describes as the interview effect. Generally, it means that as an interviewer I have a certain impact on the interview subject, and that sometimes as a researcher you can modify the informants answers to please or appear in a positive light consciously or unconsciously (Dalby & Holloway, 2010; 239).

39 During the research process, some respondents may have held back information due to

uncertainty, and fear of me presenting the data to their leader. However, I tried to avoid this effect as much as possibly by securing them that this was highly confidential data and that all the interviews would be anonymous.

On the other hand, there is also the risk of “hearing the data”, which means that there is a possibility that during the interviews, the informants may have meant something different than what the interviewer actually heard (Ibid.). This can lead the researcher to interpret certain findings and statements in a manner that fits the research in a good way, and dedicate them some significance that perhaps was not intentional from the interviewee side. However, it is hard for me to investigate if this has actually happened. Nevertheless, it is important to emphasize that I have done my best to avoid this limitation.

Some of the interviews were also conducted with limited time between each interview. This can have affected the quality of the notes conduced after the interview-process, however, I tried to set of 10 minutes between each interview in order to reflect over each interview, and prepare for the next one

Kvale & Brinkmann (2009) argues that some informants may be better than other ones. This is due to the fact that during the interviews one is dependent on a candidate that can talk freely and communicate, and someone who is motivated to participate in the interview. However, by cooperating with Scanoil in relation to choosing who should participate in my sample, I have done my best to avoid this. However, during the research process it became clear that there are some differences in relation to how much information leaders shared, in addition to diverging between how “freely” they communicated. Nevertheless, I tried to encourage leaders to share as much information as possible, by asking follow-up question and expressing a deep engagement in their argumentation.

Furthermore, I may have reached more leaders in Scanoil by emphasizing quantitative research. However, it would not have provided me with the same information because the questions have to be developed on a disciplinarian level, in addition to lacking the personal

40 part of the interview section. Therefore I find it more appropriate to use a qualitative research method.

However, it might be reasonable to say that it is a limitation that I have worked under strong restrictions with regards to the actual company. Consequently, I have had to develop fictive names for both the corporation and their change program. Hence, I have been forced to hold back some information that may have been relevant for my assignment. However, this has been taken into account on an early stage, and I have thus been able to evaluate and process this possible challenge. Given that it is the phenomenon of how change affects leaders that is under investigation in the research, I feel confident that fictive names won’t hamper my objective. The aim of the thesis is to explore how a certain situation affects leaders, and this is not exclusively tied to a certain program or company. However, it was important for me that the company operated within a certain sector, and that the program was linked to

organizational change, and these criterions have not only been fulfilled, but the restrictions does not provide me from saying so either.

Further, as previously mentioned, by only basing my research on one company in one single industry it might make it difficult to generalize the theory to other companies and industries. In other words, it will be difficult to transfer these findings since it is a small representative of a whole population. However, as the subject of matter is related to leaders suffering from transformation, and their struggles in “leading change” it can be compared with other industries and other situations as well.

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CHAPTER 4. ANALYSIS

4.0 Analysis

The following chapter is divided into two sections. The first section starts by presenting the Norwegian petroleum industry. The second section will outline the empirical findings from the discourse analysis, where the aim is to capture whether organizational changes forces leaders to change their behavior.